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Dissociative Identity Divergence
Dissociative Identity {Divergence} is a neurological divergence that is characterised as a complex trauma response whereby a single physical person's identity is split into multiple individual personalities with limited cognitive overlap. Background Formerly known as "Multiple Personality {Divergence}". (more soon) Characteristics Multiple vs Median Some within the online DID community split the concept of "plural" personalities (or "plurality") into different characteristic groupings. A true "multiple" (or "multiple/plural system") has several "alters" (alternate personalities) which do not recognise themselves as part of an integrated whole, whereas a "median" is a plural personality system that remains integrated. The key distinction between these two groups tends to be the level of dissociation, which is believed to correlate strongly with the trauma that underlies this divergence. Self-Reported Description from Amber Taylor (with permission): :”It usually starts off that way when we’re teenagers. Thankfully I’m a “scientist”. My attitude was that I wanted to explore the whole thing. Other people panic and feel like they’re going nuts. Part of your mind is literally possessing you and controlling your body - like you’re sleep walking or like you’re a passenger in the back seat of a car. :If you come at it with the right attitude - understanding that each of these parts of your own brain are all you - just different versions of you that have all had to survive various different traumas.. then I imagine I was in a war in a submarine.. we got hit and we were taking on water.. it was terrifying but we would all drown unless the kitchen was sealed off from the rest of the ship.. part of my brain broke off like a secret service agent to dive into that room and fight the hulk breach while the rest of us had to lock off that room and he rest of the secret service agents wished me away. :I see those parts of my mind as war veterans - heroes who had to become rough, tough, etc to do whatever it took to cope with that trauma and block it off from the rest of my mind so the rest of my mind could stay sane. :They dealt with that trauma for years. Now it’s my duty to go back in. Open those sealed rooms, face the filth and much of decades of having that space sealed away and sometimes face the fury of that veteran who in their mind is still fighting that battle. :It’s my job to help explain that due to their sacrifice we got to a safe place, help them connect in with the rest of “us” and form a tight knit family.. working together like the xmen.. a team of misfits who now combine their skills and their way of dealing with the world to overall function better. :I have one person who has really fast reflexes and another who can see really well in the dark.. those two team up to do the driving for us. I have someone who’s really fussy who does all the dish washing and someone else who’s really active who does all my gym work outs.. :Really it’s quite AWESOME! I don’t have to do anything I don’t want normally - I just yell out “ok, who’s up?” In my head and watch my body take over like a marionette puppet. :The trick is - don’t panic.. don’t judge.. just fight for all the parts of your mind like you would fight for your own children. :Well there’s my long diatribe explaining :) hope it helps some people understand a little more ❤️” Representation (TW: depictions of people with DID as villains and murderers, discussion of whether DID is "real", Spoilers for Fight Club) |TheGuardian:/Rose2017/From Split to Psycho: why cinema fails dissociative identity disorder> :"So many movies in these genres have used DID as a dramatic driver or a “gotcha” twist, it would be spoiling most of them just to mention their titles in this context (cough Fight Club cough). One conspicuous example old enough to spoil, though, is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, ostensibly based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein but essentially a murder mystery with a DID twist. “He began to think and speak for her, give her half his life, so to speak. At times he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. At other times, the mother half took over completely,” explains a doctor at the end of the movie. Psycho is a horror masterpiece but as a portrayal of a real-life mental-health condition, it’s nonsense. Just as autism in the movies makes you a maths genius, so DID makes you a “psycho”. :The connection between DID and horror was made before cinema was even invented. In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a multilayered literary classic that is, in essence, a study of an extreme DID case: a respectable Victorian gentleman and a bestial monster residing in the same body. Stevenson denied any real-life inspirations for the story, but that same year, Frederic Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, published an article on what he called “multiplex personality” (a more prescient description than he could ever have known), citing two well-known French cases of the time, Louis Vivet and Felida X. He sent Stevenson a copy. Stevenson’s wife also maintained that the author had read a scientific paper on “sub-consciousness” at the time." :"Movies such as Split can be extremely damaging, argues Dr Simone Reinders, a neuroscientist studying DID at King’s College London in collaboration with universities in the Netherlands. “They make it seem as if patients with DID are extremely violent and prone to doing bad things. This is actually not true and it very badly misrepresents the psychiatric disorder. Individuals with DID definitely do not have a tendency to be violent; more a tendency to hide their mental health problems. I’m very concerned about the effects that the movie will have for patients with DID, and how the general public will now see these patients. There’s already a lot of stigma and scepticism concerning this specific disorder.”" :"In 1990 Shelley Long portrayed Truddi Chase – an abuse victim who developed multiple personalities (the real life Chase reduced Oprah Winfrey to tears when she appeared on her show). Tammy Blanchard played Sybil in a 2007 remake. Halle Berry played both leads in the 2010 movie Frankie and Alice (the former a black stripper; the latter a white racist), again based on a true story." :"When you think about it, that’s what acting is. It is adopting another persona. Actors feign dissociative identity disorder for a living, for our pleasure. So, in effect, DID isn’t just an obscure, misunderstood condition; it’s the foundation for the whole vast entertainment industry that so often misrepresents it." Category:Neurology Category:Trauma Category:Dissociation Category:Disability Category:Disabled Rights Category:Mental Health Category:Psychology Category:Psychosis Category:Schizophrenic Spectrum Category:Atypical Autism